♂Henry Sherman

Henry Sherman (died 1590) was a shearman and clothier of Dedham, in Essex, England, who lived in the town for some fifty years and moved to Colchester at the end of his life. In his will he left the poor of Dedham twenty pounds as “a contynewall stocke for the poore to the worldes ende”, a fund meant to serve them for ever. He was most likely the eleventh great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Henry Sherman (1547–1610).

Dedham

Henry came to Dedham as a young man. On 11 October 1574 he gave evidence there in the lawsuit of Seckford v. Forth, over lands of the manor, and described himself as “of the aige of lxij yeres or there abouts”, adding that “he hath Dwelt in Dedham by the space of xl yeres”. He was therefore born about 1512 and had settled in the town about 1534. He had by then held land of the manor by copyhold^W for twenty years.

A shearman^W finished woollen cloth by cropping its raised nap to an even surface, and in the courts Henry is also called a clothier. He was a householder by 1548, when the manor court ordered him to clear rubbish “from the foot way against his door”. From the early 1560s he was regularly sworn of the homage, the tenants who served the manor court, and he added to his copyhold over the years, among it a share of a cottage and fourteen acres called the Hykell. In 1571 and 1572 he sued Thomas Webbe, a clothier of Woodbridge in Suffolk, for debt, and in 1575 he sat with three other Dedham tradesmen as an arbitrator in a dispute over the wills of Thomas and Elizabeth Lewes.

Family

Henry’s first wife, whom he married about 1539, was probably Agnes. In 1555 Thomas Butter, a Dedham clothier, left “to Harry Sherman’s wiffe a silver pott” in his will and made Henry his executor. The children of that marriage were Alice, Judith, Henry, Edmund, John and Robert, born from about 1542 to about 1560.

By 1573 father and son lived side by side: that year the manor court ordered the elder Henry to “scour his ditch from the door of Henry Sherman, Jr., as far as the house of John Stone”. Their son John, a tithingman of Dedham, was buried there on 16 October 1576. Agnes was buried at Dedham on 14 October 1580. In June 1581 Henry married Marion Willson, a widow, at Dedham, and his last wife was Margery, who outlived him. Neither later marriage is known to have had children.

Colchester and his will

By the custom of Dedham manor the youngest son inherited copyhold land, a custom known as Borough English^W, and Henry provided for his older sons while he lived. In April 1581 he surrendered a house and twenty acres called Summers to the use of his son Henry, who was to pay him eight pounds a year for life, and in October 1583 he made over lands to Edmund.

He spent his last years at Colchester, in a house lately belonging to Richard King, a beer brewer, for which he had given sixty pounds. He made his will there on 20 January 1589/90 as “Henry Shearman the elder of Colchester” and asked to be buried in the parish church of Dedham. To his son Henry he left “my Shearmans crafte”, twelve silver spoons and his armour, and to each of Henry’s eight children five pounds. Robert, the youngest, was to have the Colchester house, the Hebell copyhold, forty pounds, a silver and gilt goblet, a sword and a Bible. Edmund and his children, and Judith, her husband William Petfeilde and their children, had money, and his wife Margery had twenty-two pounds and two years’ dwelling in part of the house.

He gave six pounds to Doctor Chapman, the preacher of Dedham, and twenty pounds to the poor of Dedham, to be managed by the governors of the town’s free school. In a codicil of 16 February he changed the arrangement: his son Henry was to hold the money for life and pay forty shillings a year for the poor, “to be bestowed in woollen and Lynnen cloathe”. He signed the will with his mark. He died at Colchester before 25 July 1590, when the will was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury^W, and in March 1590/1 the Dedham manor court found Robert heir to his land there, as the custom required.

Notes

Birth and parentage

No birth date is entered for Henry. Thomas Townsend Sherman’s Sherman Genealogy (1920) puts his birth about 1520. His own deposition of 11 October 1574, printed by Bertha Stratton in New Light on Henry Sherman of Dedham, Essex, England (1954) from the copy in the Public Record Office, gives his age as sixty-two, so he was born in 1511 or 1512.

Sherman Genealogy makes him a son of Thomas Sherman of Yaxley, Suffolk, whose will of 1550/1 left his son Henry forty pounds “when he comyth oute of his prentyshode”. Stratton rejects this: the Yaxley Henry was still an apprentice in 1551, when Henry of Dedham was already a householder there in 1548, and she takes the Yaxley man for the father of Thomas Sherman of Diss. Henry’s parents are not known.

The records

The manor-court entries, the lawsuits and the full text of the will, with its codicil, are printed in Sherman Genealogy, which calls him “the elder of Colchester, formerly of Dedham, Essex, shearman”. The 1574 deposition, the custom of the manor and the surrenders of 1581 and 1583 are given by Stratton. The day of the codicil is given only as “the xvjth day of ffebruary”, and the three arbitrators who sat with him in 1575 were William Cutter and Michael Upcher, clothiers, and Lewis Sparhawke, mercer.

His marriages

Agnes’s burial on 14 October 1580 stands in the Dedham register as transcribed for FreeREG. Sherman Genealogy dates the second marriage, to Marion Willson, born Smyth, widow of Edmund Willson, 5 June 1581; the FreeREG transcription of the register gives 21 June 1581. The same book says there were no children of the second or third marriage. Wood (NEHGR 166 (2012): 256–57) dates Henry’s first marriage about 1539 and says the first wife was probably the Agnes buried on 14 October 1580. He allows that Agnes may instead have been a second wife, in which case she could have been the mother of at least one of the youngest children. Wood also suggests that the first wife may have been a daughter of Robert Perpoynt of Dedham; that is his suggestion only.

His son Henry

The will names “Henrye Shearman my sonne” and that son’s children “Henry Shearman Samuel Shearman Daniell John Ezechiell Phebe Nathaniell and Anne”, the children baptized at Dedham from 1570 to 1587 to “Henry Sharman the younger”. The 1581 surrender of Summers is a second tie: the son’s own will of 1610 leaves a house and about twenty acres “which I had the surrender of my father”.